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Alinor opened her mouth, shut it firmly for a moment, and then said, "Oh, go to sleep! If you do not, I will be at you, and you are too tired now to be of the least help to me." |
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"Alinor" He reached for her hand. |
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"No, Ian. Let me be. Let me go." |
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He watched her run from the room and, after staring some time at the empty doorway, lay down again. The task he had set himself grew harder and harder. Somehow he had expected Alinor to be less affected, more like Adam. He had never known her to carry a burden of woe for long. Even when she lost children You fool, he told himself, she would not make a parade of her grief for you. There was Simon to comfort her. |
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"It is too soon," he muttered, but there was no way around that part of the problem. |
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Although Ian had craved leave to attend Simon's funeral, when that had been refused he had not, as he implied to Alinor, come as soon as he could. In fact, he had delayed as long as he thought it safe, until the terms of the truce between John and Philip were fixed and it was apparent that the king intended to sign and return to England. Simon had told Ian, not long before he died, that King John had some long-standing grudge against Alinor, which for Alinor's sake he could not explain further. The years of John's reign had been too troubled, even from the first, to permit him to vent his spite on so powerful a vassal as Simon, but now Simon was dead. Until now, the king had had more important things to think about, but if he returned to England and someone drew Alinor's defenseless state to his attention, he would work off that grudge in the most vicious way. John never forgot a grudge, and he was a vicious man. |
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One could not kill a woman outright or challenge her to mortal combat with a proven champion, but imprisonment and death by starvation was one of John's favorite methods of dealing with helpless prey. Ian would not give a pin for Adam's life either, and Joanna |
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